


You're My Best Friend

by camichats



Category: Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Childhood Friends, Drinking, F/M, Getting Together, Ghosts, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 10:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30121284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camichats/pseuds/camichats
Summary: Between one day and the next, Sharon was dead. Neither her or Tony noticed.
Relationships: Sharon Carter/Tony Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo Mark IV





	You're My Best Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Written for tonystarkbingo  
> Title: You’re My Best Friend  
> Collaborator: camichats  
> Card Number: 4049  
> Square Filled: A2-Ghosts  
> Main Pairing: Sharon Carter/Tony Stark  
> Rating: Gen  
> Major Tags/Warnings/Triggers: None  
> Summary: Between one day and the next, Sharon was dead. Neither her or Tony noticed.   
> Word Count: 1,961

Tony hadn't thought anything about it, at the time. Sharon was his best friend, and they played together when their parents were busy. He was too young for his parents to tell him the moment something was wrong, and he didn't know enough about people's emotions to know that the kind of sad they were today was more severe than normal. 

Him and Sharon went off to play like normal, and a little while later, Maria stuck her head in. Sharon was drawing a picture of Aunt Peggy, and Tony was doing one of Captain America; he wasn't very good, but his main comfort was that Sharon's wasn't very good either. 

"Tony, honey? What are you doing?" 

Tony picked up his drawing-- incomplete, as of right now because the only think colored in was the shield-- and showed her. "It's Captain America." 

"I didn't know you liked to draw by yourself," Mom said with a small smile. 

"Sharon's drawing too." 

Her smile vanished. "Sharon?" she asked. 

Tony nodded and put his drawing back on the table and turned to start coloring in Captain America's hair. "She's drawing Aunt Peggy in the war. You should make her uniform blue." 

"Her uniform wasn't blue," Sharon argued. 

"Brown's such a boring color though," Tony said, wrinkling his nose. 

"Sweetheart," Mom said. She came up to Tony and bent down so she was at the same height as him in his little chair. "Is Sharon here right now?" 

"Uh, _yeah_." 

"And she's drawing with you?" 

He nodded. 

Mom's jaw clenched, and she pasted a smile on. She pat Tony's shoulder, then stood up again. "Okay, honey," she said quietly. "You have fun." 

* * *

"I'm not dead," Sharon said, wrinkling her nose. 

"She's not dead," Tony echoed, looking between her and Dr. Green in confusion. His parents had sent him in here while they took care of business instead of letting him and Sharon wait in the lobby like they used to. "That's kind of weird. Is this one of those grown-up games?" 

"Grown-up games?" Dr. Green asked. "What sort of games are those, Tony?" 

"I don't know," Tony said with a frown. He didn't like Dr. Green. "Like when they pretend not to know what I'm talking about. Or the stuff they drink that I'm not allowed to touch. Or when they lock the door and say that I can't knock unless it's an emergency." Not that there was ever an emergency that he'd need them for that he couldn't just grab Mr. Jarvis. 

"Uh-huh," Dr. Green said, writing something down on his notepad. "And how long have you been spending time with Sharon?" 

"I don't know. Since birth? Our parents are friends, so we spend a lot of time together." 

Dr. Green nodded. "Was there ever a time when Sharon's parents were over where you didn't see Sharon?" 

He shook his head, sharing a look with Sharon; this guy was weird. 

* * *

Tony got older and realized that Sharon _was_ dead. It wasn't some weird running gag that his parents were doing to mess with him or see how strong he'd hold up to someone telling him something he thought was false. Sharon realized it too. It didn't really make sense to them since she was still getting older at the same rate that Tony was, but now he knew that the event he'd gone to where everyone was crying was her funeral-- and that Dr. Green had been a therapist to help him work through the 'delusions' he'd had as a result of losing his best friend. 

He learned not to talk to her in public, and Sharon learned when she could make amusing commentary and when she should let Tony try to deal with the situation by himself. 

Tony didn't have many friends. He didn't know if it was because of the Sharon thing-- nothing beat having a best friend that could be literally everywhere with you, and it's not like he could tell anyone else about her-- or because he kept skipping grades and was the youngest person in his class by far; it wasn't conducive to making new friends. 

He was in the lab at MIT, trying to think of what he wanted his next project to be. He was sitting in a spinning chair with his legs tucked up with him, next to a desk so that he could keep spinning himself. 

"Maybe I should design an arcade game." The circuits on those things were no joke. 

"Do you _know_ how to design an arcade game?" Sharon asked from where she was sitting cross-legged on top of the desk. 

"No, but that's not the point." 

"I don't think you can make a game if all you know is the computer aspect and not the design aspect." 

Tony blew a raspberry. 

"Who're you talking to?" someone asked. 

Tony stopped spinning to look at who had walked in. His vision was still a little shaky, but he recognized his roommate, Jim. "Just thinking aloud," he said easily. It was his go-to excuse for when he got caught talking to Sharon, and it almost always worked. His parents and Mr. Jarvis were more suspicious since it had taken him years to understand that not everyone could see Sharon anymore, and they always worried that he was 'relapsing'. 

Jim nodded. "Thinking about what?" 

"Oh great, now I get to be ignored," Sharon said, putting her chin in one hand petulantly. 

"My next project. What're you doing up this late?" 

"Looking out for my roommate and making sure that he's not about to be kicked out." 

"Why would you be kicked out?" Sharon asked. 

"Why would I be kicked out?" Tony echoed, frowning. 

"I don't know, but my last two roommates were. You're pretty good to live with, so I'd like to keep a hold of you," Jim said with a smirk. "I get that there's a lot of pressure on you, man, but you can't work yourself to death." 

Tony chuckled, eyes flitting to Sharon automatically. "I'll be fine." 

* * *

Tony was laying on his bed, head on a pillow. Sharon was laying on the bed, too, with her feet on the pillows and head at the end of the bed. 

"This sucks," Tony said. 

Sharon sighed heavily. "Yeah. Which it shouldn't. It should be great." 

"I mean, falling in love with your best friend? This is the shit rom-coms are made of." 

"But rom-coms end with a wedding half the time, and you can't marry a ghost." 

"Marry? Dude," Tony said, "we can't go on a date. We can't even talk to each other in public without people thinking I'm having a mental breakdown." 

"Has there been a single rom-com with a ghost that actually ended well?" 

"I don't know, how did that Swayze movie end?" 

"How should I know? Neither of us watched it." 

Tony sighed. He knocked his foot against Sharon's shoulder. "Bright side? We can still touch each other." It was an ability they'd never lost, and he was eternally grateful for that. "It'll be fun, like... a secret relationship." 

"Secret for _you_." 

"Pretty much everything you do is secret." 

"Secret to everyone but you, and since you're the only one who can see me, I think it would be more accurate to say that I have _no_ secrets." 

"You might have secrets from me," Tony said. 

Sharon snorted. "Trust me, I don't." 

* * *

Tony didn't drink very often. It was because he couldn't afford to get drunk, and he usually couldn't stop after only a couple drinks. When he got drunk, he either talked _about_ Sharon, or he talked _to_ Sharon. Either way, it wasn't really good, because then people wanted to know who Sharon was and why they'd never heard about her before or met her. So it was just easier to not drink at all rather than continually have to remind himself to stop. 

Tonight was a night where he forgot not to drink. When he got drunk, Sharon got drunk, so it's not like she could remind him not to say anything. 

"So," Clint said, rocking on his heels, "Tony Stark." 

"That's what they tell me," he said, taking a sip of his drink. It tasted like shit, and he realized that he didn't have very much left in his glass; if he finished it now, he could get a drink that tasted better. 

"Yeah," Sharon giggled, "and if you ever forget, you'll have a hundred different people ready to remind you." 

"Including you?" Tony asked. 

"What makes you think I wouldn't forget too? We're _linked_." 

"What?" Clint asked, looking confused. 

"Nothing," Tony said. He threw back the rest of his drink. "I'm Tony Stark, and we're all aware of it." 

"You know what aromanticism is?" 

"Is that the lack of romantic attraction thing or the, like, incense thing?" Tony asked. 

"I think it's the first one," Sharon said. 

"The first one," Clint said. 

Sharon spread her hands as if to say 'see?'. 

Tony snickered. "Yeah, I've heard of it, why?" 

"There are some people that think that's what you are since you've never been in a relationship." 

Tony started to snort laugh, which managed to hurt his nose. "Not to crush their dreams, but I consider myself thoroughly committed, thanks." 

"You are the most committed!" Sharon declared with a grin, throwing an arm around his shoulders and leaning on him heavily. 

He shook his empty glass at Clint. "I'm getting a refill." Sharon leaning on him threw off his balance a little, but it did help him from stumbling as much. He'd thought that he was basically fine, but he was having more trouble walking than he'd thought that he would. "Wow, maybe I shouldn't get a refill," he said, with a chuckle. 

* * *

"What do you think?" Sharon asked, turning to look over her shoulder and lifting one foot to better look at her shoe. 

"Are those the ones that Louboutin just released?" 

"Yeah." 

"I'm sure it would look more professional if you weren't in sweats," Tony said with a smirk. 

"I'm asking about the shoes, not my overall look." 

"They look good. Though I admit, I don't know why you care since only you and I can see you." 

"Well, I want to look good for the two of us. We're the only people that matter," she said, winking at him. 

He chuckled, walking over to give her a quick kiss. Tony started unbuttoning his shirt as he moved to the dresser. "I wish everyone thought that way; it would make my life so much easier." 

* * *

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Stark," Bucky, his new assistant, said. Then he turned to Sharon and held out his hand. "And you are?" 

"You can see her?" Tony asked. 

At the same time, Sharon said, "You can see me?" 

Bucky's smile froze on his face. His eyes darted between the two of them. "Am- am I not supposed to be able to, sir?" 

"No. No, this is good," Tony said with a disbelieving smile. "I think she's gotten tired of only having conversations with me." 

Bucky's hand dropped back to his side, and he swallowed thickly. "How long have you been dead?" he asked Sharon. 

"Since we were kids." 

"Really?" he asked, voice tinted with surprise. "I've never met a ghost that wasn't frozen the way they were when they died." 

"What, like in Beetlejuice?" she asked. 

"Pretty much. Sometimes without all the bloody details." 

"That's... horrifying. Whatever, I'm Sharon," she said with a smile. "Tony's best friend for thirty years and counting." 

"I'm Bucky. Tony's assistant for thirty seconds and counting." 

"Congratulations Bucky," Tony said, "you now have job security. We're keeping you." 

The smile Bucky gave was nothing short of complete and total relief. "Glad to hear it." 


End file.
